Documents to Go — a very cool app that allows you to edit and create documents on your iPhone. It has a desktop module that makes syncing with a given folder(s) very simple. Allows you to use the iPhone as a backup device. Highly recommended. 4.99. Well worth it. All of the eReaders — Stanza, [...]
Do you have two computers? Do you want to back up your working documents from one to the other without thinking about it? You should check out Windows Live Sync. This is a very clever and simple application that allows you to specify a folder on one computer to sync over the internet to another [...]
Nobody likes to be pushed around. Well. Almost nobody. And as in life, so with literature. We are always more engaged in a story when we feel pulled along rather than pushed forward. Drawn into the flow of event and language rather than lectured and led. Isn't that the deeper meaning of the film writing [...]
Perhaps the cardinal sin a writer can commit is to mitigate his intention for fear of offending. I always say: if it's worth doing, it's worth doing extremely. The most benign form of this error is timidity. Often I have seen descriptions of characters that pull punches. Make a decision. If your character is greedy, [...]
There are two ways to think of a film treatment. Articulating your story — what you know of your story before actually finishing it — to yourself. Pitching the story's potential to someone else. The first is a working document. The second is a sales document. One is for consumption, one is not. A story [...]
The pace of your prose should mimic the tempo of the imagined visual image. I call this "mimetic description." So, for instance, if you are writing a love scene, your sentences might be longer than usual, might have strained adjectives. The prose might be a little purple. If you are writing a chase scene or [...]
A frequent bad habit found in screenplays I call "cushioned description." It comes in many forms. And for various reasons. But such sentences all have the same shape: padded with temporal or spatial modifiers. Here are some examples of what I mean: As Gladys enters the bar, she spies Frank. While Frank plays pool, the [...]
